Trapdoor
by Alas Poor Yorcake
Summary: Lloyd finds himself going through a troubling time after Charlie's death. His sudden temporary mental instability isn't helping matters, really. Angst, oneshot.


**A/N: Well, here's an extra for you guys waiting on the second installment in my Breakout Kings trilogy, just to keep you guys interested. It's set directly after the second season premiere, An Unjust Death. This fic has not yet been revised, and probably won't be. Just a bit of Lloyd angst to past the time, really. Enjoy, and R &R!**

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 _" … Everyone gather around for a show / Watch as this man disappears as we know / Do me a favor and try to ignore / As you watch him fall through a bleeding trapdoor … " - 21 Pilots, Trapdoor_

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He catches a glimpse, right before the elevator door closes per Erica and Shea's joint strength; he supposes that he should have been helping them out, as some sort of wretched piece of symbolism that Charlie's death has brought them all closer together, but with his body as weak as it is, he doubts that he would have been able to offer any substantial amount of aid, never mind any sort of vague attempt at symbolism. The sight of Ray leaving a glass for Charlie was enough. A bit too much, one may argue.

Each point of his IQ is measurable, is quantified, and means something. It was how he assured himself at a young age that being different meant something, something other than a curse. Now, it seems, each IQ point means too much. It means one amount of intelligence more that should have worked harder to save Charlie, that should have driven himself to finish what he started at twenty-four in that courtroom, that should have thought harder and faster instead of being dead and useless because then maybe now his mind wouldn't be over thinking about the image of Charlie seared into his brain, with blood on his lips and a trembling body struggling to function as the life flees from its vessel, and in his eyes the fear and lack of any acceptance, even resignation, but instead a pleading mantra of _oh god, it's all ending, oh god, these convicts are the last thing I'll see, oh god, I never got to say goodbye to my wife,_ please _-_

Lloyd isn't crying. He's not, and the others know this. Shea and Erica don't spare him any second glances, and Lloyd puts a hand to his cheek just to check that the wet there isn't actually a tear. It's not.

It's actually not, now that he glances down at his hand. It's blood, that comes back to his hands, and as he stares blankly at it, he feels a faint pang of recognition and realizes that whether he's seeing it or hearing it or smelling it, he can sense that it's Charlie's, Charlie's blood on his hands, and so, so many girls and boys and women and men and children are bleeding, and the blood's on his hands, and he can feel himself growing dizzy. He knows every name of every person whose blood is on his hands, and it makes him sick.

The college attendees whom he sold prescriptions to, his students he had as a professor that trusted him, and, possibly even, people whom Charlie could have saved in the future, had Lloyd not as good as killed the man. And then, of course, Damien Fontleroy. Lloyd, oddly, mourns him the most; he's died, if not already literally than metaphorically, on the inside, and Lloyd knows it's his fault. It's all his fault, all _… oh, god,_ please _, no …_

He's lost track of reality, and feels himself jerk involuntarily as he realizes his surroundings, in the van driving to Maybelle. Erica and Shea are talking, or maybe they're not, Lloyd can't tell, but they're certainly staring at him with their lips moving, and all Lloyd can hear is a sharp noise in his ear, like feedback, but less quick and loud, and slower and gradually increasing in volume, and Lloyd can almost hear the small ripples in the sound waves, but what he sees is infinitely worse, because the walls that he aren't immediately looking at are starting to get larger and larger as their perception changes, and when Lloyd looks to them, they pause, and the walls in his peripheral begin moving again, and he can see the air rippling, and the shadows appearing in the cracks, the haunting outlines of all of the people he's killed and doomed, and they're grabbing at him, reaching for his wrists and he can't even feel his handcuffs anymore, too many fingers are curling tightly around his forearm and get them off, get them off, get them off -

He manages to break his thumb, and he begins swatting at the hands reaching for him, pleading for him, as the handcuffs slip off of his hand, and he can't tell the figures of Shea and Erica apart from the other people grabbing at him, so he struggles around his way to the nearest door he can find, and swallows harshly several times as he can feel the walls of the van door on his back, slowly crushing him until he finally stops struggling with the door handle and finally manages to open the door.

He tumbles out sideways, landing on his side and rolling a couple of times, until he stops with his back on the ground and his eyes to the sky. Except now the sky looks rather red, and it doesn't normally look like that, but Lloyd realizes a moment later that things should tend to look rather red when one is looking through bloody tears, and isn't that significant, for blood isn't translucent if it's arterial, and he's definitely not looking at the sky, because he would see tips of buildings and clouds and the sun, but all he sees is darkness. And yet … now there are shadows moving in the darkness. Two forms. Reaching toward him. Their faces he doesn't recognize, and he doubts they even do have faces, but their clothes he knows he can see, and he can recognize those; one is Charlie, the other … the girl who overdosed. They're reaching toward him with their hands …

He blinks.

When he opens his eyes, the red is gone from his vision, and he's kneeling in a graveyard. It's mid-afternoon, a conclusion Lloyd comes to rather from instinct to assume it's daylight by his time-sense than by actual proof. But, then again, he seems to have lost time, and an incredible amount if it's mid-afternoon, as they had left in the van somewhere around five o'clock. Lloyd glances around with his suddenly clear vision, and realizes that it's not actually daylight, but rather himself staring into a lamp on the road he's kneeling on next to a grave. It's around sunset, and that word strikes a chord in his memory, leaving him limp and unable to dam the overflow of memories coming to him. The last case, Brody Ardell, the talk they all had at the end of the case, Lloyd's words spilling without any conspicuous filter that the others can notice, and the sentiment like a crushing anvil.

He doesn't remember anything after getting in the elevator, anything before this moment, but it doesn't seem to cause him much worry. He can feel tears streaming down his face, real tears, not of viscous and sharp scarlet liquid, and he can feel sore pain in his knees from kneeling, but for once he can push away the real pain in place for the phantom one in his soul.

Charlie DuChamp, lived an honorable life and died an honorable death, March 25, 1974 - March 4, 2012 read the gravestone in front of Lloyd. There were dozens of flowers laid on the grave, each telling the story of grief of dozens of different people connected to this one man. And there was nothing Lloyd could put on this grave that could possibly convey the amount of grief and guilt that coursed through his veins and weakened his body and mind. Two-hundred and ten IQ points were suddenly dulled and seemed to slip away into silence along with Lloyd's tears.

He wouldn't grieve normally, this he knew. He would grieve the same way he grieved for the girl he killed with his prescriptions. He would grieve the same way he grieved for his mother when he went to jail and realized that the probability of not seeing her was incredibly high. He would grieve the same way one would when they lose a family member.

In private.

It almost seemed like Ray had sensed that he needed some time alone, because when he finally did arrive, only a few minutes later, he drove the car directly behind Lloyd, took the key from the ignition and stepped out, leaning against the door with his arms crossed as he waited patiently.

They waited there for what seemed like years, all compressed in a realistic form of a couple of hours, until Lloyd shed his last tear and then began to speak. He knew, as a registered psychiatrist, that bottling things up would eventually lead to a cocktail of mental deterioration and depression, as well as others that his mind listed off instantly without fail. A few hours of silence had gotten his brain working again, enough to psychoanalyze himself and begin to speak to avoid the effects of his psychoanalytic diagnosis. His eyes never wavered from the grave, and his voice never shook, but Ray could tell just as easily that the man was far from stable.

"I take responsibility," he started. "I take responsibility for what I have done, and what I should have done. I realize my mistakes, and take full responsibility for the consequences. Don't tell me to spare myself from the wood; I carved that cross ten years ago with full knowledge that someone would be nailed to it eventually, and a singular ignorant thought that it couldn't possibly be myself.

"This is a cross I have carved and waxed. This is a cross I have carried, and I have been hung upon, against my will. I believe it is my fault because I was the main cause of events, and created a chain of reactions that strung an exemplary man in a noose and kicked the chair out from under him.

"I may exaggerate the blame, to punish myself, but I know, that at the very minimum, I was the craftsman who forged Charlie's death. And I recognize that I am to blame, and that the consequences are not only mine to uphold. I also recognize that it is important to signify the impact that Charlie's life had on ours, to celebrate what he did to make the world a better place, but as a man who shoulders the realistic fault for his death, I must be allowed to grieve. I must … I didn't - it wasn't - I didn't mean for - "

He swallowed the sob crawling, dragging itself up his throat, and bottled the scream resting in his heart, but let the tears flow freely. He felt the atmospheric rustle of a presence sliding up to his side, and closed his eyes softly as Ray began to rub circles into his back to soothe the genius.

"Let it out, man, go ahead, there's no-one else to hear, just let it out … " he whispered, and Lloyd wanted to scream.

No one would hear. That's precisely why there was no point in screaming. No one would hear, meaning there was 0% probability of someone listening. There was no-one to help, no-one to fix this hole in his very self that has steadily grown with each death he's caused. But Ray didn't see that, didn't understand. He couldn't see the blood on Lloyd's hands.

No one could, until they were brought down by those very hands.

After a while of letting that statement sink into his own mind, Lloyd did what he had seen every psychiatrist do, at least once in their lifetime. They took a deep breath, blinked several times, and put on a fake smile that wouldn't hold at the slightest push. Lloyd's smile trembled in the wind and cracked half-way through, and it felt just as broken as he was.

But he kept it on, kept the facade up, and shakily informed Ray that yes, he was perfectly fine, he just had had a minor mental breakdown, it wasn't too terribly uncommon with a loss, and being a psychiatrist, he knew exactly what to do to keep himself healthy enough for work.

Ray peered into his eyes for a moment longer than normal, and Lloyd almost wanted him to look longer, to see the grief in his eyes, to see the crippling guilt, to see the wrong in his mind; but no such opportunity presented itself, as Ray looked away a moment later to Charlie's statue, and gave it a soft pat before walking to the driver's seat in his car and taking a seat.

Lloyd followed with unsteady steps, enjoying the last few moments of solitude and darkness he would get out of reality in a long time. But he knew he wouldn't have to say goodbye; he saw solitude every time he glanced around the prison and at the rest of the team, and at Julianne; he saw darkness everytime he closed his eyes and stared into the back of his eyelids, which held secrets that he would never utter to himself, never mind out loud.

But no matter, now. He had a card game to look forward to later, in prison. And, even as he felt himself slipping away, slinking back with head bowed into his addiction, and ignoring the screaming psychiatrist in his head telling him to get help, he smiled a fake smile and carried on.

There had never been any kind of help for the kind of wrong that he was.

A murderer.

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 _"Nothing kills a man faster than his own head / He used to see dreams at night / But now he's just watching the backs of his eyes … " - Trapdoor, 21 Pilots_

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 **A/N: So, hope you enjoyed, be sure to leave a review, and I'll see you guys next time.**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


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